One of the Most Beautiful Guitars Ever Made

This top-of-the-line guitar weighs in at just 6.70 lbs. and has a 17-inch carved spruce top reinforced with two parallel braces, solid maple back and sides, and a thickness of only 2 1/4 inches. The scale length is a short 23 1/2 inches. Two-piece maple neck with mahogany strip, multi-bound ebony fretboard with pointed ends, 22 wide jumbo frets, pearl block inlays, and a nut width of 1 11/16 inches. Inlaid pearl "Gibson" logo with pearl flowerpot headstock inlay. Individual Kluson Sealfast tuners with tulip-shaped metal buttons. Two great-sounding humbucker pickups with black plastic surrounds and outputs of 7.29k and 7.27k. Multi-bound tortoiseshell with five-layer (white/black/white/black/white) plastic pickguard. Tune-O-Matic retainer bridge with rosewood base and specific three-loop tailpiece. All hardware gold-plated. This fine example, with only the slightest tarnishing to the gold-plated hardware, is one of only forty-five guitars made in 1966, out of a total production run of 1,189 between 1955 and 1970. Housed in its original Gibson black hardshell case with orange plush lining (8.50).

Named after famed 1950s guitarists Billy Byrd and Hank Garland, the $550.00 Byrdland was unveiled in 1955 as the top-of-the-line model in the then new thinline series. Patterned after the L-5CES, except for a shorter and narrower neck (designed for easier fingering of "twisted" chords and faster playing speed), the Byrdland went through the same evolution in terms of pickups and body style. In late 1960 the body was restyled with a pointed Florentine cutaway to facilitate access to the fingerboard. The newer shape entailed the use of a slightly shorter pickguard. In the summer of 1962 the neck was changed from a two-piece to a three-piece maple lamination for added strength. In 1963, the two-piece maple back was replaced with a one-piece laminated maple back. The Byrdland is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful guitars ever made.